Galal Abada

Galal Abada is an Egyptian architect and urbanist, and an assistant professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo, where he also is director of the Historic Cairo Studies and Development Centre. Dr. Abada was trained at Ain Shams University, the School of Architecture Paris-Belleville (France), and the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium; he received a PhD in architecture and urban design from Stuttgart University in Germany. His projects and winning competition entries are located in Belgium, Germany, and throughout the Middle East, notably in Egypt where his ongoing projects currently include a number of urban rehabilitation, adaptive re-use and design schemes, and Children's Cultural Clubs in Historic Cairo, the headquarters of the NOEU in Cairo Citadel, the Qena Museum, as well as the site planning and visitors centre of Dendara temple and the proposed improvement project of the Luxor Temples site. Dr. Abada was a member of the editorial board of and a frequent contributor to the Egyptian architecture and design magazine Medina. Most recently, Dr. Abada was invited to evaluate the submissions to the international competition for the Great Egyptian Museum.

Medina Magazine is a unique and ambitious project in the Middle East by a group of architects, designers and artists to collaborate to present both architecture conceived and created in Egypt, and examples from other contexts that contain elements relevant to architectural designers, students and educators working in Egypt.

This magazine that has been published in Arabic and English since 1998 is divided into three sections to aid the reader in critiquing their built environment; to see that each component negotiates with the other to form our visual world. Structure, decorative details and interpretations of spaces and how society reacts to them anchor Medina's founders' conception as apparent in the selection of articles presented on ArchNet.

Medina goes even further than presenting architectural, design and art projects; as part of their design revolution in Egypt, Medina also organizes annual design competitions for students and professionals, as well as supporting symposiums and art projects.